A Cognitive Approach To The Polysemy Network For On

Polysemy has now come to be an important issue in the current linguistic study as it is being analyzed from a cognitive view different from traditional ways. More and more linguists pay much attention to such a language phenomenon.In previous studies, most linguists (cognitive linguists excepted) have argued that mental lexicon is an arbitrary list of lexemes and the analyses on polysemy should be made at a sentence level and are context dependent, or only involve the changes in the argument structure of verbs. On the other hand, cognitive linguists take a different perspective on the nature of polysemy. Lakoff has put forward his radial category theory in the study of polysemy phenomenon and also has proposed a full-specification approach to prepositional polysemy. However, Tyler and Evans bring the cognitive approach to a desirable stage. Basing on previous researches by cognitive linguists, they build a model mainly for the study of prepositional polysemy, the model in which distinct senses derive from the protoscene for a preposition through interacting with a set of cognitive principles, thus forming a highly motivated polysemy network.With Tyler and Evans's model, this dissertation makes an analysis on the polysemy network of preposition on, attempting to test the model as an effective approach to prepositional polysemy and throw some light on the polysemy network for on.This dissertation consists of five chapters and the main contents are as follows:Chapter One briefly introduces the main purpose and theoretical basis.Chapter Two gives a general view on polysemy and previous approaches to polysemy.Chapter Three introduces Tyler and Evans's model for the study of prepositional polysemy.Chapter Four makes an analysis on the polysemy network for preposition on with Tyler and Evans's model.Chapter Five draws a brief conclusion and also points out some deficiencies in this dissertation.